Happy Thanksgiving Day to all of the site readers in the USA. (I’m guessing it’s just another Thursday for those of you who find yourselves living in “exotic” locations.)

As this entry’s title says, I am writing this on Tuesday, and post-dating it. To all of you out there who are the primary (as in “only”) cook in your homes >>> If you are reading this entry during the day, you know that I am probably “enjoying” the national day off by doing one of the following “fun” activities:

Peeling potatoes
Cutting up celery
Dicing onions
Preparing the green beans
Making the white sauce to go on the pearl onions
Preparing the stuffing
Mashing potatoes
Cutting the turkey
Baking the pumpkin pie
Preparing the gravy (Which I have to admit, I cheat on>>> I use the turkey flavor canned gravy with a whole lot of coarse cracked pepper in it >>> No lumps for us… and a whole lot easier for me!) 
ETC!!! 

Of course, if you’re reading this entry after, let’s say, 6:00 PM… Then my “fun” activities will be somewhat different:

Doing the dishes
De-boning and carving the turkey
Finding space in the refrigerator for all of the left-overs
Labeling cut-up turkey for the freezer
Finding space in the freezer for all of the excess turkey
ETC!!!

Not to worry though… Since we favor the Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, someone will probably help me by opening the can… if only to hear the swoosh as the air suctions out of the can when the cranberry “blob” falls into the bowl >>> which I placed right by the can >>> next to the can opener!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you… cooks and non-cooks!

I know that I have been remiss in writing an entry… I usually don’t take this long a break from writing, but I have been trying to get some things accomplished before my daughter comes home for her Thanksgiving break. She’ll be home for only two full days, and then will be going back to Cambridge for the remainder of the semester. I have a lot to get done before she arrives.

I thought that I would quickly “check in” and mention that I am continuing to make my way through my holiday themed mystery books. I enjoyed the first of the Special Pennyfoot Country Club mysteries (by Kate Kingsbury) and am reading a “Jessica Fletcher” (Donald Bain) holiday mystery right now. As I have mentioned before, I am becoming a rather slow reader, so I am hoping that I will be able to make it through a couple other holiday mysteries before our calendars change to 2010. (Can you believe it’s been ten years since all of that hub-bub about our computers not being able to change from the 1900s to the 2000s?!?)

How about you all? What are you reading? Drop us a line if you wouldn’t mind telling us about your current book… even if you’re not reading a mystery!

I was just browsing through a few of the alphabetical pages on the Cozy Mystery site, and was somewhat surprised at what I found. A few years ago, when I started the site, I (apparently!) didn’t add any information for some (as in “quite a few”) of the authors.

I cannot believe that the very popular Donna Andrews has this description: “One of her series involves a blacksmith theme (the Meg Lanslow series)…” OR >>> How about what I have listed for the wildly popular Mignon F. Ballard >>> “Her series features a guardian angel… Augusta Goodnight”…  Hmmmm…..

Those “blurbs” are embarrassing to me! VERY embarrassing! What was I thinking about when I wrote those?!?!? Is that really the best I could do?!?

So, I have decided that I will slowly make my way through the mystery book authors’ alphabetical pages and try to remedy this problem of mine… I am going to try to update some of the authors whose descriptions are paltry. I will try to include something about the author’s “previous life”… other than the very obvious “I always wanted to be an author” type of information. Something that might give the prospective reader an inkling as to why the author ended up writing the types of books he/she does. Maybe a great gourmet is now writing a culinary mystery book theme series, or an ex-lawyer is writing a legal thriller series (à la John Grisham.)

This is not to say that I am going to change all of the “descriptions” of all of the authors. Take, for example, one of the blurbs that I would like to use as an example of what all of the blurbs should be: “Sharon Wildwind served as an army nurse in Vietnam and now writes a series featuring ‘Pepper’ Pepperhawk, a nurse returning from Vietnam.”

Ok, ok, I know I didn’t do a phenomenally great job with the above example, but it does provide a nice starting place for someone who is looking for a new mystery book author to read.